Open letter to Boris Johnson from a resident saying no to HUB on Grain

To the Mayor of London, Mr Boris Johnson esq.

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you concerning your proposals for an airport on the Isle of Grain or in the Thames Estuary. I

am not writing as a Liberal Democrat rather as a father, a husband and a resident of Gillingham.

I will not trot out all the arguments of environmental damage and problems of shipping, the SS Richard Montgomery etc - which you have all heard and discounted rightly or wrongly before.

What I want to do is implore you from the point of view of the residents.

The Medway towns need serious regeneration and money injected to maintain basic services and inferstructure like our crumbling road system. There is also a ready base of people here who would gladly come and work there myself included. I work in London as a CCTV operator in a National Museum and I would relish the chance of working for more money in the Private sector closer to my home.

However I, and many in the Medway towns do not want the Airport on our doorsteps.

If you could just look at the Photograph I have inserted you'll see a little Green flag which sits atop of a light amongst a sea of lights. That light is my house on Sturdee Avenue, Gillingham. As you can see I would be right under the Isle of Grain's circling aircraft. Suddenly my idyllic little corner of England will have noisy aircraft filling the blue sky and filling our ears and forcing house prices down.

Any gain we as an area would gain from the airport would soon be lost by people relocating away from the flight paths. I know that if I had the money and my wife's mother wasn't ill and local to us I would relocate to Winchester (where I went to university) on the day the first foundations went in. I do not want my children to grow up in a flight path, nor do I want Rochester's traditional and historic sleepy ethos be disrupted by constant over flying aircraft. As strange as it may seem, I do love Gillingham and my family have been residents of these towns for well over a century, my Grandfather built defences here in World War Two, my Great-great Grandfather is commemorated on the Boer War Memorial in Brompton Barracks, my wife's family are here. This is our home and although I want it to be better in some ways I also love it for just what it is and this sort of change will no doubt ruin it in so many ways and could force us elsewhere.

 Even the promise of jobs is a lure as there will be fewer jobs available. All those in Heathrow who will found themselves unemployed following your proposed Government buy out will flood to Medway as skilled and experienced workers.

I understand that you are the Mayor of London and you want to make London a world leader but the people of the Medway towns and the Isle of Grain have spoken to their elected officials on the Local Council and in Government and Tracey, Mark and Rehman do speak for the majority when they say that the Medway Towns do not want this.

I would implore you once again to rethink this and to not rule us, the residents under the flight path, out as Trivial, we are far from that and we have told our elected officials No.

Yours Faithfully

C. J. Sams